Harvard + Hugo = Stupidity

True it is over 2 months old but only a journal with the name "Harvard" in it could come up with something as ignorant as this:

Furthermore, these leftists are not dictatorial. Chavez has won multiple elections and the opposition has not been squelched. He has allowed partisan, anti-Chavez mass media outlets to continue broadcasting. For example, multibillionaire Gustavo Cisneros’s Venevisión, the main commercial television channel in Venezuela, actively supported the 2002 coup against Chavez and has repeatedly called Chavez supporters “mobs” and “monkeys.” Nonetheless, Chavez has not shut down these types of operations. Thus, while he is perhaps guilty of some abuses of power (including a statement about his desire to stay in office for 25 years), US attacks on Chavez’s democratic legitimacy ring false and often help him to boost his support.

Elections do not a democracy make. The USSR had elections, Cuba has elections, so does Zimbawe. Mexico had elections for over 70 years with the same party winning every stinking time. Does that make a country a democracy?
Somehow, someway the piece got worse:

While some trends in Latin America do present some serious concerns, the region’s new left offers great opportunities and few threats for its own people and for the United States. (emphasis mine) In US policy circles, however, the term “leftist” continues to raise alarm, provoking counterproductive policies that have frequently strengthened the positions of the administration’s ideological opponents. Like Hezbollah and Hamas, Latin American populists have learned that they can gain political support by providing the poor with needed social services. A recent USAID study shows that democracy has been improved where aid has been targeted to those truly in need. The United States has not learned these lessons and has continued using policies of isolation and angry rhetoric. Engagement, alternatively, could advance mutual interests and offer much greater promise than isolation.